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Ori's Army Buffs for Agents: Empire (S&F)

TL;DR - this mod adds two new skill lines to all the non-caster Empire agents in vanilla (i.e. Empire Captain, Witch Hunter, and Warrior Priest). The new skills focus on army-wide unit buffs.

Agents/heroic characters in vanilla have somewhat lackluster skill trees, so this mod gives each non-caster agent two new skill trees that focus on buffing other units when the agent is embedded in an army. In total 4 new skill lines were created, each one centered on a different unit class as follows:
1. Flagellants and Knights of the Blazing Sun.
2. Melee State Troops.
3. Melee Cavalry.
4. Skirmish Cavalry.


Each agent has two of the abovementioned skill lines as follows:
Empire Captain has lines 3 and 4.
Witch Hunter has lines 1 and 4.
Warrior Priest has lines 1 and 2.


Each skill line is roughly divided into 3 parts:
The first part is composed of 5 skills, each with 3 tiers, that buff specific units in battle. For example "+X Melee Defense for all Flagellants units", or "+X Charge Bonus for all War Wagon units".

The second part unlocks after spending 5 skill points in the previous section, and gives flavorful abilities to specific unit types. For example "Regeneration for all Demigryph Knights units", or "Causes Fear for Outriders and Pistoliers units".

The third part is separate to the previous two, and has skills that buff units in campaign - i.e. replenishment and upkeep bonuses.


Agents are in my opinion a campaign mechanic with a lot of potential, yet are underdeveloped in vanilla, where they perform mainly two types of tasks: Hero actions on the campaign map or fighting in combat (including spells). With this mod I tried to give them some more utility and add strategy to their skill development, by creating two more functions: Buffing units within battles (hopefully incentivizing different army compositions...), and staying embedded in an army even if that army is not fighting - through the upkeep/replenishment buffs. The measure for success being the player asking more often - "what are my agents doing right now?"

I tried to avoid more of the meta-doomstacking cheese and buff stacking, so for this reason there are some seemingly weird balance choices. For starters the buffs are all relatively weak, about the scale of 2-4 Weapon Damage, Melee Attack/Defense or leadership depending on the level of the skill. The choice to give abilities to units also fits this purpose, since the same ability can't be stacked by multiple agents (unlike flat buffs). Lastly, the units that are buffed by these skills were carefully selected so as not to create one meta skill that buffs all the 'good units', but instead, buff the typically weak units and hopefully make them more viable for campaign. If the mod works as intended, then the player should have some incentive to form themed stacks, with 2-4 agents and units that have a bit of a twist.

This mod is in Beta. I tested different skills to see that it works, but hadn't yet played a full campaign, so balance might be off and bugs that I don't know about could show up. Please let me know in the comments if anything comes up.

Should be compatible with any mod that doesn't add new skill lines to the Empire Captain, Witch Hunter or Warrior Priest. Switching on/off mid-game is not recommended.

I don't have any plans to expand on this mod or adapt it to other factions (aside from a version I made for Bretonnia - check out bellow). Feel free to change this mod as you like. If I make balance changes in the future, they will be relatively small.




Check out my other mods:
Ori's Bretonnia Vow Rework
Ori's Army Buffs for Agents: Bretonnia
Ori's Respawn for Greenskins
Ori's Respawn for Horde Armies
Ori's 50% Experience Gain
Ori's Frozen Climate for Norsca and Kislev
Ori's Overpowered Raids for Beastmen and Savage Orcs
Ori's Super Agents: Buffed Campaign Actions